OUT OF CONTROL

This little piece of news (registration required) made me thoroughly sick.

It seems that, at a northwest Atlanta apartment complex, the typical evening amusement would be to toss rocks, chunks of concrete, and firecrackers at passing vehicles, including fire trucks that were responding to emergencies and fuel tankers enroute to a nearby fueling station.

On Tuesday, the stakes in this fun little game got a little more serious.

Rafael Diaz was hauling 7,500 gallons of diesel fuel from a Powder Springs depot to a truck stop about a mile away at I-285 when a group of about eight to 11 teens, in jeans and white T-shirts, began shooting off firecrackers and throwing rocks and chunks of concrete at his truck about 2 a.m., police said.

A bottle rocket exploded in Diaz’s face, causing extensive head injuries, police said.

The truck overturned, shearing off the top of the cab and splitting the driver’s head open, baring his skull. When firefighters showed up at the scene, it looked like something out of Road Warrior, with about fifty people on top of the overturned truck.

Apparently, this sort of outrageousness has been going on for a long time. The highway, Hollowell Parkway (formerly known as Bankhead Highway), is littered with debris and chunks of concrete, some as big as footballs. This was a tragedy waiting to happen.

The overturned truck leaked about 20 gallons of diesel fuel. Had it been gasoline, the story would have been even uglier. The driver, meanwhile, is at Grady Hospital in serious condition.

I used to call on a customer in that general vicinity. It was not a pleasant neighborhood twenty years ago, and it seems that it has not improved. No Urban Gentrification here.

I’m not sure how much success the police are having with the search for perps, but as I see it, there’s a simple solution to this bullshit.

All you need to do is close the roads in and out of the neighborhood. Nobody gets in or out. No food deliveries. No gasoline. Just seal it off. Cut off the water and electricity to the apartment complex where these vermin live, while you’re at it.

I guarantee you that, within three days tops, the normally unhelpful local residents will be so up in arms, they will frog-march these rock- and bomb-throwing turds that did this thing straight to the House o’ Shamuses...if they don’t summarily execute ’em themselves.

For my money, they all ought to be dragged off and shot. And I mean it literally, not figuratively. I don’t want these shit-for-brains thugs to breathe this planet’s oxygen, eat of its food, or have any chance, however remote, to pass their stupidity-raddled DNA on to future generations.

Oooooh, am I being too harsh? Naaah. Screw’m.

Update: The AJC reported today (July 7) that the gang of assholes youths responsible for the attack on the fuel truck “beat the driver and stole his wallet as he lay in his overturned rig.”

The police have one 18-year-old in custody, the one who is said to have caused the wreck to occur. But there should be more arrests forthcoming.

Shooting is too good for these rat bastards.